Is the U.S. government planning to force Americans to take vaccinations during the coronavirus pandemic with the help of Bill Gates? No, there is no proof for that: A video from InfoWars has gone viral, asking if viewers were going to "allow your government to impose forced vaccinations?" The video tapped into history to suggest the government's response to COVID-19 is a plot to force vaccinations with Gates' aid.
The claim -- or many claims -- started with the InfoWars video (archived here) posted to a Facebook page on April 11, 2020, with the following text:
IMPORTANT BANNED VIDEO!!!
Take your time to listen to this and keep listening until the end
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
The video makes a host of claims -- many of them misleading or just false. But the dominant claim is that Gates is now trying to force vaccinations -- which currently are not available -- on the population during the coronavirus pandemic. We'll unpack it here:
The five-minute recording begins by talking about population control through the years and opens with historical anecdotes about 18th Century thinker Thomas Malthus' views:
In 1798, An Essay on the Principle of Population as it affects the Future Improvement of Society was written by Thomas Malthus. He outlined the idea of positive checks -- which are diseases, wars, famines and genocide. Malthus believed that these things should be utilized to increase the death rate and believed that human misery was an absolute necessary consequence."
The video says Charles Darwin "hinted at the implications of human populations," and describes his cousin (he is actually a half-cousin) Sir Francis Gaulton's "obsession" with a "cultivation of race" or "eugenic."
Noting the word comes from the Greek word "eugenes," which means "noble race," the video then discusses eugenics in history and claims, "Planned Parenthood was formed in America by racial eugenics advocate Margaret Sanger," which is misleading. It then discusses IBM founder Thomas J. Watson's connection to Nazi Germany during World War II through a subsidiary in Poland. After that, the video makes the connection between Sanger and the Watson family, noting that Watson's granddaughter married Margaret Sanger's grandson.
Then, the video makes broad claims tying Gates -- the Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist -- to IBM, Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood before making it's ultimate -- and false -- claim, warning warn about Gates' intentions:
With no medical background, Bill Gates then went on to become the world's foremost pusher of vaccines and population control. Do you think this is all coincidence?...The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funds the WHO, the NIH, the CDC and the UN."
The foundation has donated to, or partnered with, all of the organizations as can be found here, here and here. But the foundation does not "fund" them. The video then states while showing a clip of Gates discussing short- and long-term coronavirus restrictions: "And now he is saying that, until we get mass vaccinations, we might never be able to gather in groups."
The video also claims President Trump's COVID-19 response team "are all pushing the Bill Gates vaccination agenda."
A clip is shown of of Dr. Anthony Fauci in January 2017 at Georgetown University saying:
There is no question that there will be a challenge to the coming administration in the arena of infectious diseases in the sense of already ongoing disease and we have certainly a large burden of that...but also, there will be a surprise outbreak."
The video, trying to make the connection between Gates, the virus, the government and mass vaccinations, then notes: "Dr. Fauci is on the Leadership council for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation." The last part is true, as shown here. As is the fact that Dr. Deborah Birx, the head of the White House Coronavirus response, is a board member for the Global Fund, whose charge it is to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. That was founded by the Gates Foundation, but there is no evidence to the statement that the fund is "known for millions of dollars of fraudulent misuse of funds."
Further, the video repeats a claim that has been around social media and debunked by Lead Stories: "In October 2019, Bill Gates sponsored Event 201, a simulation that estimated 65 million people killed by coronavirus." While Event 201 was a real simulation, there was not estimation of 65 million dying in the current coronavirus. It was an exercise, not a prediction.
The video also states: "In November 2019 the Pirbirght Institute, funded by Bill Gates, was granted European patent number EP 317-2319B1 for a coronavirus vaccine that may be used to treat humans."
This was debunked by Reuters:
"The Pirbright Institute carries out research on infectious bronchitis virus (IBV, here), a coronavirus that infects poultry, and porcine deltacoronavirus that infects pigs. Pirbright does not currently work with human coronaviruses. More information on our coronavirus livestock research can be found on our website."
The video also warns: "A top UN Scientist admitted that vaccines are killing people." This is also off the mark, and LeadStories debunked the claim in January.
The video goes on with this caution: "There is no proof that vaccines are the answer," and it cites the lawsuit from ICAN against the CDC saying, "the CDC admitted in federal court that it does not have studies to support the claim that vaccines do not cause autism."
This is a claim making the rounds on the internet, but the CDC maintains that vaccines do not cause autism. Also, Lead Stories could find no evidence the CDC actually admitted that it does not have studies to support the claim that vaccines do not cause autism. In fact, the CDC submitted 20 studies that they claim show vaccines do not cause autism.
The video ends with another warning:
One should be able to give a very factual account and therefore there is less and less trust in the system. It is time to do some hard thinking. will you allow your government to impose forced vaccinations?"
